Saturday, December 26, 2009

The morning after Christmas I got dragged in to the hospital to see a guy for headaches.

He kept referring to he and his wife as having "a traditional Christmas", which apparently landed him in the hospital. "Traditional" obviously varies from person to person. Here is how Mr. Traditional and his wife spent their traditional Christmas (and it took A LOT of coaxing to get the whole story out).

They woke up on Christmas morning. Then:

They had a traditional cup of coffee. Then:

They had a traditional exchange of gifts. Then:

They had several traditional shots of scotch. Then:

They smoked a few traditional joints. Then:

They did a few traditional lines of cocaine. Then:

She gave him a traditional under-the-mistletoe blowjob. Then:

When he blew his traditional load he had sudden onset of the-worst-headache-of-his-life (not a tradition).

He was taken to ER, where he had a traditional head CT, MRI, and MRA (having to drag in an MRI tech on Christmas).

So then he had a traditional spinal tap. Which was equivocal, because he wouldn't hold still.

So then the angiogram team got called in on Christmas.

So then he had a traditional 4-vessel cerebral angiogram, complicated by bleeding and a BIG hematoma at the groin puncture site (yeah, your wife's gonna love that thing next to your yule log, dude).

The admitting doc then felt a second traditional spinal tap was needed.

And that's how Mr. Traditional spent his Christmas.

When I met him (and his charming wife) this morning he asked me if I'd ever seen a case like this before.

This is so far from my 'traditional' celebration that I couldn't even guess what happened, but would imagine that if I heard someone in the vicinity ask the physician if they've ever heard of a case like this before, I would guess the reply would be it's rather uncommon to happen on Christmukah Day.

I can't decide if I should be impressed by this guy's honesty or appalled that alleged grownups behave this way and admit to it so shamelessly. All the same, it makes me feel smugly superior that my traditional Hanukkah included playing dreidel, eating latkes and falling asleep early after watching my son pass into an ecstatic frenzy after receiving a Mr. Potato Head. Unless, of course, it means I've missed out on the kind of profligate living that will give me something to be wistful about later on.

Food for thought. My husband and I have only been married for a few years, have no children and live far from family. We were just talking about how we should create some of our own traditions - these ideas would keep Christmas from feeling just like any other day off!

Backing in the day - more than 30 years ago - when i was doing a neuro rotation i remember a 4 bedded ward. every bed was occupied by a comatose young male who had had a sub-arachnoid bleed during coitus. The obvious comment WAS made during rounds - "They wouldn't have known if they were coming or going."

We had an interesting ER case yesterday, involving an MD owner of the patient. This doctor (a pain management doc) insisted that his dog with a colonic torsion just needed deep abdominal massage and a tube run into the GI tract. Apparently, for the last several years, the dog would get a bloated stomach (which had already been pexied, so it should not have a torsion) and he would massage the gas away. When the stomach was opened on necropsy, we found a 2 lb 11 oz hair ball in the perfect shape of the stomach. The stomach would bloat when it got trapped in the pylorus and the "deep massage" would move it out of the pylorus and allow the gas to escape.

This owner tortured his dog for several hours by not allowing the attending (who is a vet of 26 yrs with a residency in critical care and emergency) cut the dog and cure her. It was a miserable experience for the entire staff. But the hair ball pictures were impressive.

My Traditional Christmas consisted of a pyshotic patient we are basically babysitting decided to drop trou and pinch a loaf all over her room. Then the Great Blizzard of the Midwest came and all the nurses called in stuck that morning.

Curious minds need to know: just where was the mistletoe hung? And with all of their openness in their play by play, did they skip the "traditional" ass to mouth or was that part of the "traditional" closing festivities that were so rudely interrupted?

Welcome to my whining!

This blog is entirely for entertainment purposes. All posts about patients may be fictional, or be my experience, or were submitted by a reader, or any combination of the above. Factual statements may or may not be accurate.

Singing Foo!

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